Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Personal Injury

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hospital patientEvery year the ECRI institute releases a list of top main concerns that may lead to patient harm and medical malpractice. While cybersecurity was one of the main concerns in the previous years, the ongoing Covid 19 crisis put a lot of pressure on hospital staffing and “staffing shortages” is now at the top of the concerns  followed by worker’s mental health and racial disparity in treatments.

The pandemic emphasized concerns that were already latent in the American healthcare system but that have worsened during the pandemic:

  1. Staffing shortages: the registered nurses median age is 52 year old with 20% of them being older than 65 year old. Young nurses are needed but nursing schools are missing proper resources such as faculty, clinical sites, classroom spaces and budget. As a result 80,407 nursing school applicants were turned down in 2019.  In the coming years, staff shortages will be experienced at all levels of the healthcare system from nursing assistants to technicians such as laboratory technicians as well as critical care doctors, hospitalists, pharmacists and respiratory therapists.
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using the wrong ladder can result in accidentInjuries and deaths resulting from ladder accidents are extremely common. According to the most recent CDC statistics, over the last decade, 81% of fall injuries treated in American ERs were resulting from falls from ladders. Ladders were also involved in 43% of all fall fatalities.  Thousands of people are injured and hundreds are dying every year in ladder accidents. Year after year, our construction accident attorneys are helping construction workers injured in ladder accidents getting compensated for their injuries. Most of the time, construction workers fall from ladders because they are not provided with the adequate ladders to perform the task. One of our recent clients was a carpenter who was standing on a 6-foot A-frame ladder while pinning studs above his head. The ladder that was provided to him was not proper for the work he was doing. As the carpenter was working, the ladder kicked out and the man fell. He suffered a spine injury and had to undergo a microdiscectomy to his lumbar spine. Our attorneys were able to obtain a $1.250 million settlement on his behalf.

In New York, the law requires that workers using ladders be provided with the adequate equipment to execute the task and that ladders are not defectively maintained, placed or operated. However despite that law, many negligent contractors continue to provide workers with inadequate, broken or old ladders that put them at risk of dangerous accidents.

Ladder accidents are not only common on construction sites but also at home. From changing a smoke alarm, to cleaning gutters, home owners also use ladders and get injured frequently.

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car accident scene in ManhattanIf you were injured in a car accident in New York City or NY state, you should be able to obtain at least $50,000 compensation for your medical bills,  loss of  earnings and other out-of-pocket costs regardless of who was at fault in the accident because New York is among the 12 States in the US that have a No-Fault coverage. One can also purchase excess no-fault coverage up to $175,000.

The New York’s automobile No-Fault Law was enacted in 1970 with the goal to get insurance benefits quickly to anyone involved in a car accident regardless of who was at fault in the accident. It was initially a straight forward process that helped victims getting quickly compensated without having to go through long and complicated litigation.  However, under the pretext of abuse, insurance companies have made it so complicated to file a claim that you may need the help of an attorney to help you navigate the process and make sure you obtain proper compensation.

What does the No-Fault cover in NY State?

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victim of personal injuryIn a city like New York, people are getting seriously injured because of the negligence of someone else on a daily basis. Being injured is always very stressful as victims endure not only physical but also emotional pain and have to deal with all the financial and organizational hardship that result from being injured.

Therefore it is important for personal injury victims and/or their family to do their homework when looking for an adequate personal injury lawyer to represent them.  Taking some time to “shop” for the right attorney will save you time in the future and help you get fully compensated for your case.

Here is a step by step approach on how to find the perfect New York Personal Injury Lawyer for your case:

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657 pedestrians, 161 cyclists, 870 passengers and 1,429 motorists were injured in motor vehicle accidents in New York City last January. 19 other road users died in crashes the same month, including 11 pedestrians, 5 passengers and 3 motorists. This is the highest number of fatalities for a month of January since January 2019 and the highest it ever got during a month and more than half of them were motorists. Last year during the same month, 13 people were killed in traffic accidents in the city.

auto accident fatalities NYC January 22
auto accident deaths by category of road users New York January 22
The total number of  people injured in motor vehicle accidents in January 2022 in the city was a little higher than in January 2021 when it reached 3,028 however this number remained lower than numbers recorded during the months of January before the pandemic.  The graph below illustrates well the seasonality of car accident injuries with the month of January being usually a month during which there are less injuries reported than during the summer months. The graph also shows a big drop during the lockdown.

Motorists and passengers are the two categories of road users that usually sustained the most injuries of all auto accidents reported in the city.

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Claremont Park where the pedestrian was hit by a car58 year old Cristina Emiliano was hit by a car in the Bronx and sustained life-threatening injuries. The pedestrian was walking her dog Rocco in Claremont Park in Morrisania around 6:50 am on Saturday morning when a car drove on the pedestrian path and struck her. The car driver was identified as  21 year old Becan Floyd. The young man who lives in a shelter nearby, saw the car parked outside of the shelter and stole it for a joy ride.

According to the police, after stealing the car, Floyd first sped down a pedestrian path in the park, then drove on the grass and hit a tree. He then continued to drive and according to the police intentionally struck the woman.

“When she moved over to the side to avoid being in his line of trajectory, he steered his vehicle directly towards her, accelerated his speed, and struck her head on,” Assistant District Attorney Briana Pryce said, adding police officers saw it “with their own eyes.”

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drone inspection can prevent accidentsRecent studies found that drones can be helpful in identifying hazards and preventing workers getting injured or killed in construction accidents.  The Center for Construction Research and Training is hosting a free webinar on Wednesday March 23 about drones in construction and specifically how they can help make construction sites safer. The webinar will be presented by the authors of 3 studies in this field:

  1. Rod Handy, MBA, Ph.D., CIH, University of Utah  who is the lead author of a study entitled Nebulizer-retrofitted drone deployment at residential construction sites will explain how water spraying drones can reduce exposure to air pollution and heat stress and as a result prevent dangerous illnesses
  2. Masoud Gheisari, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management, University of Florida who is the lead author of Using unmanned aerial systems for automated fall hazard monitoring in high-rise construction will share how drone technology can help identifying hazards and safety issues on construction sites especially the most common and dangerous ones that are related to falls. His study focuses on the monitoring of guardrails near unprotected edges and openings in a high rise construction site. The author developed an automated fall hazard recognition system that could facilitate the recognition of guardrails in high rise construction projects.
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location of the Bronx fatal dump truck accidentA 76 year old pedestrian was fatally struck by a dump truck in the Bronx, NYC, on Monday morning. 76 year old Lola Blair was crossing Enstein Loop around 11:45 am when she was hit by a dump truck making a left turn from the Hutchinson River Parkway service road onto Einstein Loop.  The dump truck driver first continued to drive but then returned to the scene of the accident. The woman was rushed to the hospital where she died from her injuries. She was living nearby, in Co-op city.

Drivers, especially truck drivers must exercise due care when driving in residential areas but so far the NYPD did not charge the dump truck driver for failure to exercise due care.

On Friday another pedestrian was fatally struck by a garbage truck in Brooklyn ( see previous blog).

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location of the two houses destroyed in the crash6 people were injured and two houses were destroyed after a car driver lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a residential building in Staten Island. The driver, identified as 38-year-old Mark Robles, was initially pulled over by the police for a broken brake light. One of the officers said he  saw a crack pipe in the car and the police attempted to get the man out of the car. Robles did not comply and sped away behind the wheels of his 2007 Jeep Patriot and the police started to chase him.

Residents were sleeping when the jeep crashed in their house

The chase took place at 3:30 am on Thursday morning during a rainstorm. Robles sped down on St Pauls Avenue, hit a patch of water, skidded, rotated 360 degrees and ended crashing into two houses located at the intersection of St Pauls and Van Duzer Street. 6 people suffered minor injuries.

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IPhone_12_-_3A recent study found that strong magnets in some electronic devices can interfere with the good functioning of  pacemakers and result in potential injury or death for the wearer.   “If you carry a portable electronic device close to your chest and have a history of tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) with an ICD, strong magnets in these devices could disable your cardioverter defibrillator,” said lead author Corentin Féry, a research engineer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Institute for Medical Engineering and Informatics.

Devices that have been identified as potentially dangerous for people who have a cardioverter defibrillator are the new Apple 12, Apple Airpods charging cases, the second generation of Apple pencils and the Surface Pen from Microsoft. In the study, researchers were able to deactivate five different types of defibrillators by simply putting the electronic devices next to the defibrillators. Deactivation would occur when Apple products were at a 0.78 inch distance from the pacemaker and 1.14 inches for the Microsoft pen.

The study is a confirmation of a previous warning by the FDA that some electronic devices such as mobile phones and smart watches might cause some medical devices implanted in patients to switch to “magnet mode”. Many implanted medical devices are designed with a “magnet mode”,  which is a safety features that for example allows patient with such devices to undergo some medical procedures such as MRI. However this safety feature can actually become dangerous for patients, especially those wearing a pacemaker, if an electronic device such as a cellphone can switch the pacemaker to “magnet mode”.

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